The Human Effect
by Whiskey144
Summary: When they found Humanity, it was unlike anyone had ever imagined. For here was a species that had found Element Zero and Mass Effect Physics within the past decade- but more than a thousand years after they had achieved interstellar flight. Mass Effect AU
1. Chapter 1

**INTRODUCTION**

_Humans are upstarts because they have never learned their place in the universe._

-Saren Arterius

_Despite the fact that we have been in contact with humanity for more than a hundred and fifty years, we still know so little about them- to the point that we do not even know **what they look like **under their encounter suits._

-Lecture at the University of Thessia, unrecorded professor(s)

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Many historians choose to gloss over the realities governing First Contact with Humanity; of how the Turians finally found an opponent that outmatched them in more ways than they could have imagined, of how the Asari for the first time found that they could not entice a species into compliance with Citadel Law, and of how the Salarians could not penetrate the information networks of this new power.

More than that, however, they choose to play down the importance of the events leading up to The War, as it became known. For it was not a case of mistaken law enforcement, the reason most often trotted out by the Turian government. It was raw and brutal imperialism- for why else would the Turians have dragged in a non-Council species?

Where they expected an easy conquest of a power that did not even understand Mass Effect physics and sciences, they found that they were severely outmatched, in ways that should have been impossible. They found that they had, quite simply, swatted the curious pup, and the mother beast had come to swat them back.

What follows is an analysis of that conflict and the recent history of the Citadel-Human relations; it has been assembled from eyewitness accounts, historical documentation, and parsed combat footage. This document does not, in any way, downplay a single detail; instead choosing to present nothing but the truth, in its brutal entirety. Many will disagree with this paper's findings, but facts are facts, and this is a verifiably truthful analysis.

Date formats as presented are in the form of Pre-Contact/Galactic Standard and After-Contact/Galactic Standard, or PC/GS and AC/GS, respectively.

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A/N: So this is an idea I've been sitting on for a while now. The idea is a historical document analyzing humanity and their interactions with the Citadel and the Terminus- and beyond- within the framework applied be a couple of assumptions. What said assumptions are will be revealed shortly- but suffice to say, they're generally pretty different than most AU concepts, at least IMHO. Rest assured, all those technically-minded among you, I intend to do a parallel resource consisting of Codex entries regarding human technology.

Feedback is awesome. Except for flames. Constructive criticism, yes. Flames, no. Flames do not make a story better. They either leave it the same or send it into the ground.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N****:** Yes, I know it's short. But the buildup, well, you gotta have that buildup. In any case, I think that this should be a short, but very informative read. And yes, the final entry on the timeline is intentionally blank.

_Disclaimer: Mass Effect is a copyrighted, registered property of Electronic Arts and Bioware. I OWN NOTHING [except the original content]._

**TIMELINE**

_2682 AD/2000 Pre-Council-_ Humanity achieves interstellar spaceflight via relativistic vehicles. A tenuous empire is forged between the stars within roughly 20 lightyears of Sol over the next few centuries.

_3282 AD/1400 Pre-Council_- The krogan enter the nuclear age, and Tuchanka is ravaged by global conflict, triggering nuclear winter. Society is rebuilt on a formation of warring clans.

_4582 AD/80 Pre-Council-_ The asari develop element zero based FTL space travel, and discover the Citadel.

_4597 AD/65 Pre-Council_- The human holdings have expanded to approximately 50 lightyears radius, centered on Sol/'First System'. Relativistic vehicles are still used for interstellar travel. Initial deep-field expeditions launched; each is a self-contained caravan of vehicles carried on a 4-kilometer long trestle structure for interstellar travel, and often called "rammers", due to the heavy reliance on catalyzed Bussard ramjet technology.

_4662 AD/20 Pre-Council-_ The salarians discover the Citadel.

_4682 AD/0 GS_- The Citadel Council is formed, volus first contact and formation of the Unified Banking Act, turian Unification War.

_4882-5082 AD/300-500 GS_- Volus embassy established, batarian, hanar, and quarian first contact, discovery of the elcor and establishment of trade route and elcor embassy.

_5082-5382 AD/500-800 GS_- Rachni wars, krogan uplifting.

_5317 AD/735 GS_- First breakthrough with wormhole-based superluminal travel in human space. Initial experiments promising, though incredibly small-scale.

_5782 AD/1200 GS_- The Krogan Rebellions begin. Turian first contact, volus become turian client species.

_5792 AD/1210 GS_- The turians unleash the genophage. The Rebellions have been doomed.

_5837 AD/1255 GS_- The next major breakthrough with wormhole-based superluminal travel occurs in human space. The ability to create a compact device capable of being fitted to a ship is proposed and research into the concept is begun, though parallel research regarding deployable gate structures is still conducted.

_5882 AD/1300 GS_- Krogan Rebellions end, turians take on the military/peacekeeping role the krogan previously filled. Citadel Conventions drawn up.

_5982 AD/1400 GS_- Turians receive a Council seat.

_6577 AD/1995 GS_- Final and ultimate breakthrough with wormhole-based drive technology made. Ships may be fitted with jump drives, while much of human space is linked by gate structures. The Empire, as it officially becomes known, undergoes a sudden boom of expansion. In the course of approximately ten years, the Empire expands from a sphere of roughly 60 lightyears radius, to a sphere of nearly 150 lightyears across. Further contact with deep-field rammer expeditions is made, leading to several cluster-zones forming that join the Empire.

_6977 AD/2395 GS_- The Geth/"Morning" War occurs. The quarian embassy on the Citadel is closed by Council order.

_7159 AD/2577 GS_- The resource extraction colony of Shanxi is founded. Current projections indicate that the methodical extraction and claimation of every single material resource on the planet will take roughly 250 to 300 years. Liara T'Soni is born.

_7221 AD/2639 GS_- Saren Arterius born.

_7232 AD [7 PC]/2650 GS-_ The Turian Hierarchy begins launching expeditions to find habitable dextro-amino worlds, as well as large amounts of extractable resources; the Hierarchy also begins research into spaceborne superstructures to house the projected overpopulation it will begin to tremble beneath within the next century. Sometime during this decade, Mordin Solus is born.

_7237 AD [2 PC]/2655 GS-_ Saren Arterius is promoted to active turian military service.

_YEAR ZERO [7239 AD]/2657 GS_

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	3. Chapter 3

**A/N****:** Yes, I know it's been a while. Real life intervenes at the most inconvenient of times. Also notice that the timeline has been updated.

_Disclaimer: Mass Effect is a copyrighted, registered property of Electronic Arts and Bioware. I OWN NOTHING [except the original content]._

**CHAPTER ONE**

_YEAR ZERO [7239 AD]/2657 GS_

The dawn of the era known as "After-Contact", the specific occasion being termed "Year Zero", was one that was arguably anti-climactic. Turian anti-piracy patrols received fractured reports of a relay in the Theta system that was, quote "actin' funny", end quote, and elected to investigate it on the off chance that it was in fact pirate activity. What they found was an active relay where there had previously been an inactive one. No vessel in the system could have activated it- nobody could have been that stupid or arrogant as to flout Citadel law.

So a cruiser, the _Unyielding Law_, and a small four-strong frigate group were sent through the relay on a reconnaissance-in-force mission, with the remaining two frigates heading off to summon other Hierarchy forces to assist in the operation. After approaching the relay, and confirming a lack of presence on the 'local' side of the structure, the _Unyielding Law_ activated the relay, launching itself and the frigate group into the unknown.

Upon its arrival on the 'transgressor' side, the turian cruiser made several observations: the system contained two rocky bodies, a small-close orbiting one and a larger, habitable-zone world, as well as a single gas giant with a significant moon system. The habitable world sported two moons, and appeared to be highly arid in climate. More significantly were the signs of civilization- and spacefaring civilization at that. In orbit was a superstructure nearly a fourth the size of the Citadel- a structure later codified as the "Shanxi Industrial Zone Port Primus-Alpha", though for all its size it was primarily empty space by volume and tonnage- a massive network of scaffolding for the docking and overhauling of visiting starships.

Further, a massive "tower-cable", again, later codified as the "Shanxi Surface/Orbit Transit Elevator", was also- just barely- visible. Such structures represented engineering and materials science progression far in excess of anything the Citadel species had at their disposal, and potentially rivalled any ancient civilization that had been discovered by them.

Also visible was the small flotilla of ships that must have activated the relay. Galvanized into action by this sudden sighting, the flotilla commander ordered an immediate FTL transit into orbit of the habitable world, tentatively named "Transgressor Homeworld", in order to engage the orbiting starships. The resulting offensive was short, brutal, and utterly lethal- six merchantmen, two science ships, and a colony ship were lost with all hands, for a total death count numbering in the thousands.

The _Unyielding Law_ then engaged the port structure, which had used its rather limited batteries to begin firing on the- from their position, completely new and alien enemies- turian vessels. In the resulting barrage of fire, several stray rounds impacted the space elevator's cabling, severing it and causing additional casualties. Further, the Shanxi Port Primus-Alpha was completely hulled, and left ripped open to the vacuum. Due to various storage structures losing containment, numerous fires later broke out and resulted in the structure deorbiting and impacting Shanxi's surface.

Whilst normally this would have caused massive ecological damage and immense loss of life, by this time the roughly six thousand people manning the strip-miner machines operating on Shanxi had retreated to deep-ground bunkers for safety, after witnessing the effects of the orbital battle. Whilst initial orbital reconaissance by several turian frigates had revealed what could 'potentially' be large concentrations of personnel, by the time the _Unyielding Law_ was able to deploy a landing force, there were no humans left on the surface of Shanxi.

All the turians found was the technological detritus of a civilization that was potentially far in advance of their own, hundreds of thousands of highly advanced and efficient digging machines that were methodically strip-mining the world to the bone. The resources would have eventually been used to erect and establish a series of atmosphere domes on the surface of the planet, as well as numerous space habitats and expansion of the port facilities, in roughly a hundred years.

In all actuality, the turians elected to plunder and loot whatever resources were left on the planet's surface, in favor of potentially building habitation structures for their own population. What they could never have expected was the nearly-unnoticeable courier drone that had departed mere minutes after the attack commenced. Whilst it would take several years to finally reach an inhabited, Network-linked system, the message it carried would eventually be delivered.

It would be five years until the previous masters of Shanxi returned. Until then, however, the turians established an exploration outpost, and gave the world their own name, "Titan's Fall", for whatever species had occupied it was great, but had fallen to turian superiority. They discovered that the extensive asteroid belts, as well as the inner planet had such extensive element zero deposits as to be previously unheard-of in scope. Further, it was possible that there was a Prothean data cache on Shanxi, and it was confirmed that there was indeed a relatively small outpost-cache on the inner world, which received the rather more unglamourous name of "TFS-R1".

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_Accessing datafile..._

_CITADEL NEWS NETWORK, circa YEAR ZERO, post-Occupation_

"_A stunning press release by the Turian Hierarchy revealed that they have discovered an illegally-activated relay. Whilst investigations into the activation are proceeding apace, the more interesting details are that the species on the other side was apparently both remarkably advanced and amazingly primitive- they completely lacked element zero technology of any kind, but had materials science that appeared to rival that of the Protheans._

_A resource-rich world has also been discovered, and the Hierarchy is currently lobbying to gain mining rights, with provisions for other races, such as the asari, salarians, or batarians, to colonize the world."_

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In the intervening years between Shanxi's fall, and later liberation, much occurred. Whilst the turian side has been detailed above, the human side is substantially different. Shanxi was far enough out on the frontier that years of zero-contact wasn't in the least bit uncommon. The closest sector to the Shanxi Industrial Zone- the Zone itself a rough sphere approximately 200 lightyears in diameter- was the Zheijiang Sector, which had taken out the Zone as a Zheijiang-administered "area of special interest", a polite way of saying that the Shanxi Industrial Zone would benefit the Zheijiang Sector first, followed by other local sectors, with only the Imperial magistracy of the local sectors capable of superseding this order- being itself based in the neutral Aarau Sector.

Considering that the Zheijiang Sector had at its' disposal a local interstellar-capable fleet of four vessels of destroyer tonnage, in addition to a number of small corvette wings, the lack of contact between the Zheijiang Sector and the Shanxi Industrial Zone is understandable. In fact, all reports indicate that the Zheijiang Sector alone encompasses several dozen stars- only four ships will have immense difficulty covering every single system. As such, when the message finally arrived in a habitable system, it was not to an Imperial Spacy vessel, or even a Zheijiang Sector Space Arm vessel, that it was delivered to, but to an infonet uplink maintained by a rammer captain native to the distant Versailles sector.

This uplink then despatched further courier drones- both to the projected location of the maintainer of the array, but also to the nearest Imperial outpost. The relative distances involved resulted in the merchant expedition that the maintainer, one Renault Riraille, was part of. An expedition that was itself heading towards the Shanxi Industrial Zone.

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The merchant expedition itself was headed by a man known only as "Prochnow", presumably tracing his heritage from one of the central European countries of ancient Earth. Prochnow, much like Riraille, was a rammer captain, one of the oldest. Prochnow was in fact older than Riraille- he had been born prior to the Versailles-native, and had spent less time at high-R [IE, high-relativistic] velocities. This latter detail was primarily because Prochnow had caught up with jump drives before Riraille had- or more accurately, the jumper ships had caught Prochnow before Riraille.

As such, Prochnow was viewed as a bit of an older, wiser, and obscenely wealthy and savvy merchantman. The fleet consisted of three trader ships and two sector boats; the former consisted of Prochnow's own _Typhoon_, Riraille's _Voidscryer_, and a third ship, _Sabot_, captained by a Jean-Jacques Baptiste, and hailing from the Alsace Sector. The sector boats were both destroyers, one from the Mordovia Sector, the _MSSV Yeremenko_, and a Zheijiang vessel, the _ZSSV Xinhua_. Accompanying them was a small corvette squadron, five-strong.

When Riraille received the communique that laid out the details of the engagement with the unknown, and very definitely alien, newcomers, he immediately brought it to the attention of most of the captains of the fleet- both Grigori Kalasti and Kwong-Cho Jiang of the _Yeremenko_ and _Xinhua_, respectively, were notified as Jiang was the nearest representative of the Zheijiang Sector, and Kalasti was the only other military man- with a military ship- in the fleet. Prochnow was also informed- he was the expedition's leader, after all, whilst, due primarily to simplicity, Baptiste was also brought in on the situation.

They began laying out a plan, one for the liberation of the system.

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End file.
